NFL Playoff Pool for 2026 — free for friends
Fourteen teams, a handful of January and February weekends, and one decision. In an NFL playoff pool on Sportpoolz you rank the playoff field once, before the Wild Card round, and every win by a team you ranked pays out in points until the Super Bowl ends it. Free, and nobody can be late to it.
Free forever — no credit card, no money changing hands.
How an NFL playoff pool scores
This is a ranking, not a bracket. You never predict who plays whom. You put all fourteen playoff teams in order, most confident first, and each position carries a point value. Every time a team wins a playoff game, everyone who ranked it earns that team's value.
Because nothing depends on matchups, an early upset never wrecks an entry. A team you ranked high that goes out in the Wild Card round simply stops scoring, while the teams still playing keep paying through the Super Bowl.
What the manager sets
- The point scale: the value of your first-ranked team and of your last, with the values stepping evenly between. The defaults run from 100 down to 25.
- How the pool starts: on its own from the create page, open to anyone you invite, or added from an existing season-long pool's settings, which brings that pool's members along.
- Either way it has to exist before the first playoff game.
Key dates for the 2026 playoffs
- Regular season, 18 weeks: September 2026 – January 2027
- Playoffs, 14 teams: January 2027 – February 2027
- Super Bowl LXI: February 2027
Rankings can be changed right up to the first playoff kickoff and lock when it starts. From then on the standings run themselves.
A sample ranking, scored
With the default scale of 100 for your first team down to 25 for your last:
- Your first-ranked team has a first-round bye, then wins its next three games, Super Bowl included: 3 wins at 100 points, 300 in all.
- Your second team wins once and goes out in the next round: about 94 points.
- Your fourteenth team pulls off a Wild Card upset before losing: 25 points.
- Anyone who ranked the champion lower earns less from the same three wins — which is where most playoff pools are won.
Common questions
Why rank all fourteen NFL playoff teams instead of filling out a bracket?
A ranking can't be broken by one upset. Every team still alive keeps scoring for the people who ranked it, so entries stay in the race to the last game instead of going dead in the first weekend.
Do teams with a first-round bye score for the bye?
No. Points come only from playoff games a team actually wins, so a bye earns nothing — though a top seed has one fewer game to survive on the way to the Super Bowl.
Ready to start?
Creating a pool takes about two minutes, and inviting your group is one link.